“I will do my best,” said Ruth cheerily, comforted by her uncle’s confidence.  “The worst is that, for her own sake, I must not get a girl to help me.”

“The lady will help you with her own room,” said Polwarth.  “I have a shrewd notion that it is only the fine ladies, those that are so little of ladies that they make so much of being ladies, who mind doing things with their own hands.  Now you must go and make her some tea, while she gets in bed.  She is sure to like tea best.”

Juliet retreated noiselessly, and when the woman-gnome entered the kitchen, there sat the disconsolate lady where she had left her, still like the outcast princess of a fairy-tale:  she had walked in at the door, and they had immediately begun to arrange for her stay, and the strangest thing to Juliet was that she hardly felt it strange.  It was only as if she had come a day sooner than she was expected—­which indeed was very much the case, for Polwarth had been looking forward to the possibility, and latterly to the likelihood of her becoming their guest.

“Your room is ready now,” said Ruth, approaching her timidly, and looking up at her with her woman’s childlike face on the body of a child.  “Will you come?”

Juliet rose and followed her to the garret-room with the dormer window, in which Ruth slept.

“Will you please get into bed as fast as you can,” she said, “and when you knock on the floor I will come and take away your clothes and get them dried.  Please to wrap this new blanket round you, lest the cold sheets should give you a chill.  They are well aired, though.  I will bring you a hot bottle, and some tea.  Dinner will be ready soon.”

So saying she left the chamber softly.  The creak of the door as she closed it, and the white curtains of the bed and window, reminded Juliet of a certain room she once occupied at the house of an old nurse, where she had been happier than ever since in all her life, until her brief bliss with Faber:  she burst into tears, and weeping undressed and got into bed.  There the dryness and the warmth and the sense of safety soothed her speedily; and with the comfort crept in the happy thought that here she lay on the very edge of the high road to Glaston, and that nothing could be more probable than that she would soon see her husband ride past.  With that one hope she could sit at a window watching for centuries!  “O Paul!  Paul! my Paul!” she moaned.  “If I could but be made clean again for you!  I would willingly be burned at the stake, if the fire would only make me clean, for the chance of seeing you again in the other world!” But as the comfort into her brain, so the peace of her new surroundings stole into her heart.  The fancy grew upon her that she was in a fairy-tale, in which she must take every thing as it came, for she could not alter the text.  Fear vanished; neither staring eyes nor creeping pool could find her in the guardianship of the benevolent goblins.  She fell fast asleep;